


alive to be here

by AstronautSquid



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Background Jack/Anne, Character Study, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of past rape/abuse, Multi, Nightmares, Tumblr Prompt, very very gentle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 22:49:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13668933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstronautSquid/pseuds/AstronautSquid
Summary: Some things are too complicated to say in the daylight, so Max coaxes them out of Anne at night.





	alive to be here

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bigolegay](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bigolegay/gifts).



> written for [bigolegay's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bigolegay/pseuds/bigolegay) prompt: _max/anne and a nightmare_.

Max had often been accused of being uncaring. Of being oblivious to other people and their feelings and their cares.

What people didn’t understand was that she was intimately attuned to those things, and simply exercised very deliberate judgment of when to react and when to let things be.

After months of sleeping with, and often beside, each other, it took very little for Max to be alerted to even the smallest of changes in Anne’s sleep. Rosy dreams would take unsettling turns, dreamless slumber would be dispelled, when the body beside her roused in ways out of Anne’s normal pattern.

Her hand found Anne’s in the dark before either of them had fully woken. The warm metal of those ever-present rings pressed into her own, and the fingers they adorned squeezed back immediately.

“What’s wrong, ma chère?”

Anne didn’t respond right away. She shifted, the abandoned battlefield of scars across her back moving in the moonshadows. Max wanted to kiss each of them, to turn Anne around and hold her close, but she knew better than anyone to give space to her taciturn lover.

“Had a dream,” was the final answer. Anne’s voice, as it often did when they were not alone, seemed to drip from the corner of her snarling mouth, something that Max had long learned not to take personal. Not now, even if they  _were_  alone. What did a beast do but charge if it was afraid?

Max laid the back of her other hand against Anne’s cheek. When it came away damp she tested the give of Anne’s grasp with her other hand and gently extricated herself from the blankets. By the time she had poured a drink from the pitcher on the table, Anne was watching her out of the corner of her eye. When Max slipped back into bed she took the cup with hands that were moving with too much careful deliberation.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Max said after a moment’s thought. “But if it would help…”

Anne hesitated before she drained the cup in another mighty gulp and wiped the back of her hand across her glistening mouth.

“’S Jack,” she said. Max’s heart sank.

“I’m sure he’ll be fine sailing without you this once. If you’d gone along sick as you were—“

“Not that.”

Max’s mouth closed at the snap of Anne’s voice. It took another three exhales before Anne continued.

“When Charles put you in that tent on the beach, Jack didn’t understand why I got pissed. Why it bothered me. He called you a whore and didn’t see why I wanted to cut the throat of every man that ever went in there.”

Her guts turned to ice in Max’s stomach. She had managed to tamp down thoughts of those events as best she could, and never spoke of it.

“You killed them later,” was all she could offer as vague consolation. She didn’t know what else to say, how else to make Anne understand how—but there was nothing Anne didn’t understand about that, given what she had been through at the hands of her own rat’s son of a husband.

“Don’t fucking  _fix_  it, does it?” Anne flung the empty cup into the far corner of the room. “Not that you had to go through that shit, not that it made me throw up when I was alone ‘cause I couldn’t stop thinking about my own shit, not that Jack didn’t fucking  _get it._  He was there, wasn’t he? Saw what happened to me and put a stop to it, he knows all of it, knew all of it even then. And what’s he say when I’m pissed over it? Says I need to pull my shit together or they’ll chain me up next to you. Calls you a fucking whore and doesn’t understand a damn thing.”

The silence following the outburst rang in Max’s ears. She couldn’t remember Anne ever talking at such length.

“He couldn’t understand,” she offered finally and laid her hand on the sheets between them in offering. “Men usually won’t. He cares for you—“

“'Course he does,” Anne spat. “None more. But that’s the moment, innit? When everything just… broke away. What happened to me, what happened to you, me being unable to stop my own crew. And him saying that. All of it at once.”

Max lifted her hand where it lay, still untouched, and brought the tips of a strand of red hair to her lips.

“A lot at once,” she agreed and sighed. “Will you mention it once he’s back?”

The severe look Anne gave her was answer enough. Max let the strand slip from her fingers and was glad when rough hands found her own. She followed her first instinct and pulled Anne to lie beside her, cradled her warm face against her breast and pulled the blanket over them both.

“I can’t tell you what to do,” Max said softly, running heavy fingers through Anne’s hair. They caught, once or twice, on her earrings. “But as long as you’re willing, you won’t ever have to be alone with this.”

Anne sniffed and Max felt her jaw work against her own chest.

“I ain’t gonna give him up for you.”

“I know. I’m just telling you. What you can’t bring to him, you bring to me. Whatever you need.”

The long silence might have led someone else to believe Anne had fallen asleep again. Max, however, wasn’t surprised to feel her mouth move against her skin again, warm and cutting.

“I don’t fucking know what to make of it. I owe him my life, he’s closer to me than anyone else. But there’s shit I can’t tell him and he can’t understand, and how’s that for being partners in everything?”

“He’s not you,” Max said slowly. “And you’re not him. And you’re not me, and won’t understand all of me. I won’t tell you not to be upset over what he said. I cannot ever tell you that and I don’t want to. I can’t even say I  _want_  you to ever feel at ease with what he said and what he did at that point in time.”

“You don’t think I should make my peace with it.”

“… No. I move forwards, but I don’t forget. And some things I don’t forgive. And achieving harmony in the present doesn’t mean excusing everything that went before. Sometimes it means knowing, and choosing to nurse that wound, because the scar won’t fade.”

Anne’s hand found hers.

“You haven’t forgiven.”

“And you killed eight men over the same thing.”

“Felt good, too.”

“I can imagine.”

Anne shifted to lay her head on the pillow next to Max, cheeks touching. Her face was facing away from the window and shrouded in shadow.

“D'you wish you had killed them yourself?”

“Sometimes. Do you wish you could have killed your husband yourself?”

“All the time.”

Max nodded, exhaled. Her own restless hand found Anne’s as it reached out at the same time.

“Wish I could have killed him myself,” Anne said slowly. “But I ain’t lying when I say I’m glad Jack killed him, too. Some things need doing, don’t matter who does it, even if I would have liked to myself.”

“That’s how it is sometimes.”

Max sighed.

Then she blinked when a kiss was pressed to her mouth.

“I’m glad to be alive to be here with you,” Anne said and she’d never said  _I love you_  before, but Max knew all the same these words could not be spoken in the light, not even in the dark, not yet, and she closed her eyes, forehead pressed to Anne’s.

“Me too.”

And when she woke the words were still in the room, and Anne kept her in bed, two hands entwined, until the tide had come in.

**Author's Note:**

> I love these two but writing them is way out of my comfort zone. Let me know what worked/didn't work for you <3
> 
> Find me on [tumblr!](http://squid-inspiration.tumblr.com/)


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